Process of a Painting

January 06, 2016, 9:42am

In The Studio: Process of a Painting with Dyani White Hawk

Dyani White Hawk’s (NAP #113) acrylic on canvas paintings are bold, delicate, and deeply intricate. Their brightly saturated hues and geometric shapes create repetitious patterns that draw in the eye and compel viewers to want to see more. Upon further inspection, White Hawk’s paintings reveal a trick of the eye in that her brushstrokes mimic and simulate a beaded and quilted aesthetic, all in layer upon layer of fine details and repetitive brushes.

In the Process of a Painting, White Hawk walks us through her step-by-step process from the very beginning in building the stretcher bars for the canvas to showcasing the finished piece, Wičháȟpi Wakíŋyaŋ Wíŋyaŋ (Thunder Star Woman), along with its companion piece, Čhokáta Nážiŋ Wíŋyaŋ (Stands in the Center Woman). - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor


Dyani White Hawk, Wičháȟpi Wakíŋyaŋ Wíŋyaŋ (Thunder Star Woman), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in., 2015. Courtesy of the artist.

Listed under: In the Studio

July 14, 2015, 9:14am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Camille Hoffman

Camille Hoffman beautifully applies paint and mixed media to create collaged worlds that are fantastically mesmerizing, while also grounded and painterly. Her works inhabit a liminal space walking the line between realistic and other-worldly; timely and eternal.

In her recent work, Buried High in Heaven: Journey through nine antinomic realms, Hoffman uses golf course calendars, hair, plastic from a tablecloth, photos, and oil paint to create a monumental ode to her own artistic process and practice. Many of the allusions and collaged images in the work include references to her past weaving installations, thus welcoming viewers into a meditative space to reflect upon Hoffman’s own challenges, goals, and successes as a practicing artist. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor


Camille Hoffman | Buried High in Heaven: Journey through nine antinomic realms, 2015, Oil, photos, plastic tablecloth, golf course calendars, and hair on board, 108 x 48 inches.

Listed under: In the Studio

June 01, 2015, 11:57am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Heidi Draley McFall

Heidi Draley McFall (NAP #30, #113) creates monumental pastel portraits that are haunting and endearing, personal and startling. Through heightened contrast in black and white, she invites us to explore the souls and personalities of those she depicts. There is an openness and volatility to her subjects that instills a closeness and sense of shared humanness between the artist, her viewers, and her subjects.

McFall first takes photographs, then prints them, and then draws with pastel on paper to create these large six feet portraits. She recently updated her process, embarking on a darkroom photography class so that she could add an extra layer to her process by printing the photographs herself rather than going through a lab.


Heidi Draley McFall | Taylor Drawn From a Darkroom Print, 72" x 48", pastel on paper. All photos courtesy of the artist.

In this installment of Process of a Painting, please explore McFall’s fascinating multi-step process and read her own words about her work below. - Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor

Listed under: In the Studio

February 25, 2015, 11:35am

In The Studio: Process of a Painting with Susan Logoreci

Susan Logoreci (NAP #61, #109, 2003 MFA Annual) draws urban sprawl in the most beautiful way. As Los Angelenos, New Yorkers, and big city dwellers know well, the view out of your airplane window when you arrive back in your city is often one that is at once overwhelming and bittersweet. I love the feeling of coming home and am at once warmed over by the minuscule aerial view of my large hometown, though I have panged feelings of being simultaneously shocked and awed at its sprawling enormity.

Logoreci captures that feeling beautifully in her drawings. In this Process of a Painting, we are looking at her detailed hand behind the creation of U.S.C. (Urban Swarm Contemplated), 2014. Using colored pencil on paper, she creates a wonderfully and surprisingly rich and bold palette, while exploring an equally intricate subject.

After seeing her process, I asked Logoreci to tell us about the inspiration behind U.S.C. and her aesthetic approach to the commission. Please follow along and join us on this wonderful aerial adventure.


Susan Logoreci | U.S.C. (Urban Swarm Contemplated), 4′ x 6′, colored pencil on paper, 2014

Listed under: In the Studio

May 02, 2014, 9:18am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Chris Thorson

Thinking back to my senior year of college, I lived in a co-ed rental house with a bunch of guys and I remember the shocking and seemingly exponential amount of dirty socks that would congregate in the living room. In fact, there were so many that I christened a plastic laundry bin as a permanent dirty sock receptacle, living quietly behind one of the leather sofas.

Dirty socks are Chris Thorson’s (NAP #109) recent subject for her three-dimensional cast and painted works. These discarded, twisted forms carry a life of their own that tell a number of stories – where they were that day (mud from a hike or wetness from the rain), what kind of activities ensued (knee-high soccer socks or thin black dress socks), and what kind of mood the wearer might be in (sleeping sloth socks or whimsical polka-dots). For something so ugly, dirty, and potentially smelly, these worn socks carry a beauty that Thorson illuminates in her works.


Chris Thorson | detail from “Bro Series,” mixed media: hydrocal mixture, gouache, watercolor, colored pencil, oil paint, and dry pastel, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

Listed under: In the Studio

April 17, 2014, 9:58am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Cary Reeder

Cary Reeder (NAP #108) paints industrial sites in a very particular manner. These normally cold places are made to feel slightly warm because of her attention to precise details like shadow, color, tone, and hue. They are also compelling, as if Reeder is able to call our attention to details that we might have overlooked in our own neighborhoods and cities.

In this Process of a Painting, we join Reeder on her lengthy, complicated, and rather grueling process toward completing “They Still Work.” Follow along with Reeder’s thoughts and insight embedded throughout her equally important visual documentation of the process. – Ellen C. Caldwell


Cary Reeder | “They Still Work,” acrylic on canvas, 2014, 28”H x 36” W. Courtesy of the artist.

Listed under: In the Studio

April 15, 2014, 10:28am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Howard Sherman

In this Process of a Painting, painter and collagist Howard Sherman (NAP #60, #72, #90, #108) gives great insight into his process, which is based on experimentation, intuition, and action. Sherman does not have a formal approach to his works, which he feels out as he goes, much as many artists do. His approach is additive and subtractive though, and he finds the end result and the painting’s completion at unexpected moments during this experimental time.


Howard Sherman | "Edgy community of unconventional types", 70 x 60 inches, acrylic, canvas and marker, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

In his own words, “I have had a long-standing interest in creating paintings that mix muscular abstraction with a playful cartoonist sensibility. The results have been commanding and humorous. My most recent work has included a disruption of my painting’s surfaces with collage in a raw and powerful way.”

What I love about Sherman’s process is that it is not necessarily what you expect, if you’ve only seen his finished works. It’s a fun, investigational journey, resulting in witty, playful, and wonderful painted finishes. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor

Listed under: In the Studio

February 23, 2014, 11:38am

In the Studio: Process of Painting with Nick Brown

In this Process of a Painting, we follow painter Nick Brown through his creation of Gloaming which is part of his larger, ongoing series Ice House.

English-born and LA-based Nick Brown paints oversized and grandiose oil paintings of an unexpected LA subject: snow and ice. Journeying into surrounding mountain communities outside of Los Angeles, he photographs glimpses of what man has left behind to be re-subsumed by the earth…Architectural ruins, signs of old houses and lives once lived, and decaying wood burning ovens and chimneys all point to mother nature’s slow, yet beautiful decay. – Ellen C. Caldwell


Nick Brown |
Gloaming, 2013, oil on canvas, 96"x 72"x 19 1/2"

Listed under: In the Studio

February 03, 2014, 3:47pm

In The Studio: Process of a Painting with Terrence Campagna

Terrence Campagna uses new and found wood to make art that is both painterly and sculptural.  Gathering wood from a range of places including Wisconsin, Nebraska, New York and more, Campagna (NAP #101) pieces together beautifully weathered pieces with newer and bolder painted pieces that are inspired by the traffic signs on the interstate. 

In a way, his work encapsulates the blurriness our eyes encounter when taking in the juxtaposition of aged buildings and new signs we see while speeding down an interstate.  As with all Process of a Painting pieces, we follow Campagna’s work from start to finish…A process which began by filming video studies for inspiration and one which ended with two additional pieces (Untitled) pictured at the end of the post. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor


Terrence Campagna | Plumule (Reedsburg, WI/ Omaha, NE/ Marquette, NE/ Utica, NY), 10' x 5.5' x 1', 2013.

Listed under: In the Studio

April 30, 2013, 8:30am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Erin Murray

Erin Murray’s (NAP #69, #98) oil paintings have a way of making the everyday environment feel surreal, fluid, informal, and in flux.  Regular land- and cityscapes are painted to feel slightly off, making the viewer feel faintly uneasy compositionally, yet vaguely at home geographically.

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